Chapter Thirty-three

I walked to Fergus’s house with the box in both hands. It was early, a soft dawn breaking over the rooftops. Even here, in the streets of London, birds were singing all around me. At that time of the morning the volume seemed to have been turned up. I could see the blackbird on the branch of a tree, its throat pulsing.

Fergus was waiting. He opened the door before I knocked and stepped out to join me, kissing me on both cheeks and giving me a small smile.

‘Ready?’ I asked.

‘Ready.’

We didn’t talk. After twenty minutes or so we left the road and entered the Heath, making our way along the empty paths to the wilderness. We could no longer see the city glittering in the pale sunlight, or hear the noise of cars. I remembered that other dawn when I had walked there: then it had been winter, and I had come alone to talk to Greg. Standing under the boughs of an oak tree, I turned to Fergus.

‘It began like this,’ I said. ‘The alarm went and he woke and reached over to my side of the bed to turn it off, then he kissed me on the mouth and he said, “Good morning, gorgeous, did you have nice dreams?” and I muttered something thickly in reply but he couldn’t make out the words. He got out of bed and pulled on his dressing-gown, leaving me still tangled up with sleep. He went downstairs and made us both a cup of tea, and he brought mine upstairs in my stripy mug – which was what he always did, every morning. He watched me struggle up to sitting, half laughing at me. Then he had a quick shower. He sang in the shower, loudly, humming where he couldn’t remember the words. It was “ The Long and Winding Road”.

‘Mornings were always a bit of a rush and that morning was no different. He put on his clothes, brushed his teeth, didn’t bother shaving, then went downstairs, where I joined him, still not dressed. He didn’t have time for a proper breakfast. He bustled around, making coffee, reading out snippets from the headlines, finding a folder he needed. Then the post arrived. We heard it clatter on to the floor and he went to get it. He opened it standing up, tossing junkmail on to the table. He opened the envelope containing Marjorie Sutton’s signatures or, rather, Joe’s practice versions of them. He read Milena Livingstone’s scrawled message. He didn’t understand what he was looking at but he was puzzled. He tossed the sheet of paper on to the table, along with the rest of the discarded post, because he was late and in a hurry. The last time I saw him, he had a piece of slightly burnt toast in his mouth and he was running out of the door, keys in one hand, briefcase in the other.

‘He drove to work and got there by about nine. He made himself and Tania a pot of coffee, then went through his post and his emails, which he answered. Joe wasn’t there – he’d left a message with Tania that he was going to see a client. Then you arrived, to help with the new software that was being installed. Greg sat on his desk, swinging his legs, and talked to you about the IVF treatment I was going to have. He said he was sure it would turn out all right in the end. He was always the optimist, wasn’t he? Then he had a meeting with one of his clients, Angela Crewe, who wanted to set up a trust fund for her grandchild. After that, he made five phone calls, then another pot of coffee and ate two shortbread biscuits, which were his favourite. He kept them in the biscuit tin with the sunflowers on the lid.

‘He went out to lunch with you at the little Italian place round the corner from the office, and he ate spaghetti with clams, which he didn’t finish, and drank a glass of tap water, because he had just decided that bottled water was immoral. He probably told you that.’

‘Yes, he did,’ said Fergus.

‘You also talked about running, compared times. You went back to work and he went into his office and shut the door. The phone rang and it was Milena. She asked if he had received the page of signatures in the post and he replied that he had. She said she was sure that an intelligent man like him must have grasped its implications and Greg responded sharply that he didn’t deal in suspicions and implications and put down the phone.’

‘Is this all true?’ asked Fergus.

It was starting to rain and the drops felt cold and good on my face.

‘Most of it,’ I said. ‘Some of it’s the sort of thing that must have happened. The rest of it is what I tell myself in the middle of the night.

‘After he had put the phone down on Milena he sat for a while, pondering. Then he went into Joe’s office to ask him about it, but Joe still wasn’t there and he wasn’t answering his mobile. So instead he called up Marjorie Sutton’s files and went through them carefully. After he’d done that he rang her and made an appointment to see her the following day. He said it was urgent.

‘He was going to go home after that. He’d promised me that we’d have a proper evening together. I was going to make risotto and he was going to buy a good bottle of red wine. We would make love and then have a meal together. But as he was preparing to leave the phone rang and it was Joe, saying something odd had just happened concerning Marjorie Sutton and they needed to talk. Greg was relieved to get the call: in spite of himself, he’d been worried about those signatures. He told Joe he’d been trying to reach him about the same subject, but perhaps they could do it the next day. He had a date with his wife. Joe insisted. He said it wouldn’t take long, could Greg pick him up at King’s Cross?

‘Greg rang me. He said, “Ellie, I know I said I’d be home early, but I’m going to be a bit delayed. I’m really sorry.”

‘And I said, “Fuck, Greg, you promised.”

‘And he replied, “I know, I know, but something’s come up.”

‘And I said, “Something always comes up.”

“‘I’ll explain later,” he said. “I can’t talk now, Ell.”

‘And I should have asked him if everything was all right, and I should have told him to take care, and that it didn’t matter if he was late, and I should have said I loved him very, very much. Or no, no, that’s not it, that’s not it at all. I should have told him to come home at once, to cancel whatever arrangement he had made. I should have shouted and insisted and said I was upset and I needed him. I could have done. I nearly did. A whole other story unwinds from that, the story that never happens and which I’ll never get to tell, which is about a long life and happiness. Instead, I said goodbye rather coldly and slammed the phone down, and that was the last time I heard his voice, except on my answering-machine. And sometimes I wake at night and think he’s talking to me. He’s saying, “Good morning, gorgeous, did you have nice dreams?”

‘You heard the argument, anyway, or at least his end, because you came into his office halfway through. He put down the phone and turned to you, saying I was a bit pissed off with him, and you told him you were sure it would blow over.

‘When he was alone again, he sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. I don’t know that, but I can see him doing it. I see exactly the way his head was tipped, the small muscle clenching and unclenching in his jaw. He closed his eyes and thought of me feeling downcast about not getting pregnant, and suddenly his irritation seeped away and he simply felt tender. So he sent me a text. “Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry. Im a stupid fool.”

‘He stood up. He put on his jacket. He put his head round Tania’s door and said he’d see her tomorrow. He waved at you as he went. He ran down the stairs two at a time, the way he always did. He got into the car and drove to King’s Cross. Five minutes, and he’d drive home and barely be late.

‘He pulled up and Joe opened the passenger door and climbed in, carrying a bag. He said there was something he needed to show Greg. Of course Greg knew he could trust Joe. He loved Joe, after all, looked up to him and often turned to him for advice. In many ways, Joe was the father figure Greg had never really had. So Greg innocently followed Joe’s instructions and they drove east, towards Stratford, towards Porton Way. He would never have suspected anything was wrong. Why should he? How could he have done? In the boot of the car, Milena Livingstone lay bundled up and dead.

‘Greg drove Joe to the disused wasteland. It was dark and cold and there was no one around. He kept asking Joe what this was all about, but he wasn’t anxious, just a bit puzzled and slightly amused by the hush-hush air of it all. Joe, being Joe, would have come up with something plausible as they drove along, lots of details. It didn’t matter. It would never be checked. Just so long as it kept Greg from becoming suspicious.

‘Greg stopped the car when Joe told him to. He looked out of the window, to where Joe pointed. He didn’t see… what was it? A spanner? Maybe one of the tools from the boot of the car? It’s the sort of thing that’s called a blunt object. It caught him just above his eyebrow, once and then again. He didn’t know that Joe was his murderer – oh, Fergus, I hope he didn’t know, and that the last few seconds of his life were not utter confusion and terror. No. He didn’t. I know he didn’t. Joe’s aim was good and death came quickly.

‘Joe drove to the spot where he had hidden Milena. He lifted her body into the passenger seat. He undid Greg’s seatbelt. He pulled off the handbrake, and because the car was facing downhill, it didn’t take much effort to push it a few feet until it picked up speed, careered off the bend and over the drop. He watched it hurtle to the bottom. Then Joe – who was crying by now, fat tears running down his face because he was always a great sentimentalist, Joe was, and he did love Greg, in his own fashion – Joe clambered down the hillside, slipping and sliding as he went, and he set fire to the car and then he stood back while the flames consumed his partner, his beloved partner and friend. He was probably still crying. No, he wasn’t. He didn’t have time to cry. He had to get away before the fire attracted attention. The plan worked perfectly. He left two corpses, total strangers lying together like lovers.

‘The question is, did he walk away? That sounds a bit awkward to me. It would have been better to drive.’

‘What in?’ said Fergus. ‘He’d set fire to the car.’

‘Someone must have picked him up.’

‘Who?’

‘Tania, of course. But she says she doesn’t know anything about it. And, anyway, she was in thrall to him. That’s what the police think. Apparently that makes it all right.’

I hadn’t been looking at Fergus while I spoke, but now I turned to him. A single tear was running down his cheek. I reached up and, with the tip of my finger, wiped it away.

I prised the lid off the box and we crouched under the oak tree and, very slowly, I tipped the box until Greg’s ashes flowed over the rim and on to the green grass. We didn’t move, but Fergus held out his hand and I gripped it.

You were my best friend, you were my dear heart, my love. A small breeze stirred the pile. Soon it would be scattered by the wind and rain. It wouldn’t take long.

Fergus wanted to walk me home but I told him that today I preferred to be alone. Sometimes being alone is not so lonely as being with other people and, anyway, my heart was full of memories of happiness.

I walked back slowly through the beautiful blue morning, the sun on the nape of my neck, the air soft and warm. People flowed past me on their own journeys. When I unlocked my front door and stepped into the little hall, I almost called out that I was home. I went into the kitchen and stood in the silence that lay all around me. While I was waiting for the kettle to boil, I stepped into the sun-filled garden. I tipped my head back, closed my eyes and saw your face, the smile that was meant only for me. When I opened my eyes again, I noticed that a young blackbird was lying dead on the grass just a few feet away, beneath the old rosebush. I went into the house and collected an empty shoebox. Then I lifted the bird, with its damp body and yellow beak, into it and closed the lid.

I didn’t want to throw it into the bin for the dustmen to collect, so I dug a hole in the soil and put in the miniature coffin, then scraped the earth over it until you wouldn’t have known anything was there. But I knew, and although it was only a bird, I sank to my knees, put my head in my hands and cried bitterly, because it had sung so beautifully through the winter months and now it was gone. Then I stood up, wiped the earth from my hands, went back inside, and still you were not there.